Another year, another low-key Halloween. However, tonight we had our first-ever trick-or-treaters - very exciting. Our neighbour D. brought his two little girls over, dressed as a clown and a vampire, respectively. Needless to say, they garnered themselves quite a large scoff of treats, as A. had laid in ample supplies of choccies "just in case" an army of kids materialised at our door. Heh.
My sister-in-law came over this evening and made dinner for us, which was very civilised. We had squid-ink linguine with peppers - delicious. Afterwards A. lit the fire in the living room and we had cappuccinos, before attending to our other visitors.
A. brought home a litter of five two-week-old kittens this evening. Their mother died and they need hand-rearing (i.e. feeding and being made to pee every few hours). They are very tiny and adorable - but a few have picked up respiratory infections from the clinic and I am very worried about one of them, who is quite poorly compared to the others. I hope s/he makes it through the night....
Last night while watching TV, I chanced upon the trailer for Eragon, which is being released in theatres just before Christmas. I had no idea they were even making this movie. And the portents are all good - the trailer was promising, and the cast looks great (Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Sienna Guillory and Robert Carlyle all star, amongst others).
I've been meaning to read the book (and its sequel, Eldest) for years now. I've heard plenty of good things about it, though it's perhaps most notable for the fact that the author, Christopher Paolini, started writing it at the age of fifteen. I've been thinking about what book(s) to take with me to Asia, to get me through those long flights, and I think Eragon will be ideal.
I'm looking forward to seeing the film. The last five years or so, I've gotten quite used to having a dose of epic fantasy filmmaking at Christmastime, what with the Lord of the Rings movies, various Harry Potters, and the first Narnia film last year. It looks like this year, Eragon will fit the bill nicely.
Gah. After weeks of fervent speculation amongst the hard-core fan base, it was confirmed today that Andy Taylor has left Duran Duran - for the second time in 20 years.
Granted, Andy was the least popular of the original five band members. He was never my favourite. But looking at the various configurations of Duran over the years, any fan of the band will tell you that nothing has ever equalled the chemistry of the original lineup. When those guys reunited in 2001, it was a dream come true for all of us - especially for those, like me, who never had the opportunity to see the original band live during its heyday in the early 1980s. It's not often that you get the chance to revisit something so wonderful from your youth.
To be honest, I had a niggling feeling, deep down, that the reunion was too good a thing to last. I always detected faint suggestions that the tensions which drove the band apart the first time, in 1985-86, had never been fully resolved. The pressure of making their 2004 comeback album Astronaut a hit, coupled with a grueling two-year touring and promotion schedule, couldn't have helped. I think that's why I made such an effort to see the reunited original members playing together, live, so many times - I wanted to soak up as much of the experience as I could, wondering on some level if each opportunity might be the last. I saw them twice on the UK reunion tour in 2004 (in Manchester and Dublin) and again in Montreal last year (I attended a fourth show, in Boston, but it was Andy-less as his father died that spring and he bowed out of a few gigs around that time).
I'm genuinely surprised at how sad I am to hear this news today. Duran Duran will surely soldier on and continue to produce great music. A new album is in the works, and I will almost certainly travel to see them play live again, with four members instead of five. But it won't ever be the same. I can't help but feel like the dream has now ended, somehow.
Andy, you rocked. Goodbye and good luck - you will be very sorely missed!
Just found out that the social historian Arthur Marwick has died (obituary here in The Guardian). His British Society Since 1945 (Penguin, 1982) is a pretty standard text for British contemporary history, and he's written plenty of other seminal works. A sad day for the profession.
Had a total Lil Suzy Homemaker moment last night. Went out and bought a new washer and dryer, and it was really rather exciting.
I was going to wait to upgrade our laundry, but the roofing work we had done last month ended up costing considerably less than we'd budgeted for. So after extensive web research, consultation of relevant consumer reports, etc., all the signs pointed to Kenmore, and off to Sears we went (as they are having a sale on laundry appliances at the moment).
I'd decided to get a stackable, front-loading washer and dryer, which will give us the room to install a badly-needed wash tub in our small laundry closet. I'm a fan of front-loading machines from my years spent living in Europe - the top-loader that came with our house works fine, but the wash performance doesn't even come close to the little Zanussi washer that I had in Dublin. And although wash cycles are a lot longer with front-loaders, and they are more expensive, they use way less detergent, water and energy. So it seemed like a no-brainer.
We're getting this washer and the matching dryer. They should be delivered next Thursday, at which time we'll put our old washer and dryer out in the shed (going to try to sell them, as they still work fine). A. has a lot of plumbing and electrical work to do now, though - there's pipes to be relaid, new dryer wiring to be set up, and the wash tub purchased and installed.
Had an interesting afternoon today. On Monday, I got a call from the alumni office of one of my former universities. They put on sessions for students each year, in conjunction with the Registrar's Office, on life and career options after university. One of the sessions, scheduled for today, was on the topic of graduate school, and the organizers were in a panic because one of their panel speakers had to pull out unexpectedly. So they had a trawl through the alumni records for suitable replacements, found me, and gave me a call to see if I could step in.
Of course, I was delighted to be asked. I was one of three speakers (the other two being career academics), and the session this afternoon was very informal and relaxed. We each spoke for about 5-10 minutes on our own personal grad school experiences, then invited questions from the students. I must say, I really enjoyed it. And it reminded me, yet again, of how much I miss working with students - it's so gratifying.
It also had an added benefit - the chair of the session today was the Registrar herself. Since I've been bombarding her office with resumes these past two years, it was good to have an opportunity to meet her under such favourable circumstances (and I think she definitely recognised who I was). At any rate, it can't hurt that now, the next time I potentially apply for a job in her office, she'll know exactly who I am.
Shelled out the cash and went to a travel health clinic last night after work, to take some advice on what vaccinations and/or medications I might need in advance of my Vietnam trip.
In the end, I ended up having injections for hepatitis A & B, and a tetanus booster. *points to sore arm* The hep vaccination is actually a course of three shots, so I have to go back again next month for the second one - at which time I'll also get an immunization for typhoid.
Other than the tetanus, turns out I'm up to date on all the other standard shots - which is good, because these things don't come cheap. The consultation and all the injections (except for tetanus, which is paid for by the province) came to $200. Some of that might be covered by my health plan, though.
Still, I think it's worth the money. The likelihood of contracting anything serious on this trip is pretty small, but you never know. In fact, one of the people who went to Vietnam this past May for our project has been very sick ever since he got back. His doctors still don't know what's wrong with him, but it looks like he picked up something while he was overseas. One of his symptoms is loss of appetite, and he's dropped 47 pounds over the past 5 months. One of my bosses saw him recently, and didn't even recognise him. Scary stuff.
So needless to say, I'm taking my health precautions seriously. In reality, though, the problem I'm most likely to have is some sort of intestinal upset. The only other time I've travelled in a developing country (Egypt), I was laid low by an attack of "mummy tummy", which was...uh...highly unpleasant. I'll have to watch what I eat.
So my work trip to Asia is all booked now. It's going to be a hell of a journey - 27-30 hours each way. It will totally be worth it, though, so I've just got to suck it up.
On the way to Hanoi, the usual routing via Toronto and Hong Kong was sold out, so I'm going via Toronto, Vancouver, and Seoul. I don't mind that, though - it'll be good to have the journey broken up and a chance to stretch my legs before starting the trans-Pacific flight (Vancouver to Seoul is 11 hours, but Toronto to Hong Kong takes 19!). I'll arrive in Hanoi around 11 pm on a Saturday night, so I can go straight to bed - and I have all the next day to recover from the jet lag, as our meetings won't start till Monday.
I'll be leaving Hanoi on Friday evening, and flying to Hong Kong. I've booked myself at the Salisbury Hotel, run by the YMCA in HK. Our project people use this hotel a lot and it's quite the little gem - in the centre of the action in Kowloon, right next door to the famed Peninsula Hotel, and doesn't cost a fortune (a rarity for Hong Kong). Anyway, I'll have two nights there (the second under my own steam) - so I'll have all day Saturday and Sunday morning to check out the city. I catch my flight for Toronto in the late afternoon on Sunday. I get back to Halifax around midnight that night, local time...and I'll probably have to go to work the next day. Argh. But that's not going to put me off taking an extra day for myself in HK. I'd have liked to spend more time there (who knows when I'll get back to Asia again?) but don't have enough holiday entitlement to do so, unfortunately.
I've borrowed a bunch of guidebooks from the public library, and am already planning my shopping excursions. I'm thinking it will probably be safe to leave the buying of Christmas presents until very late this year...
Today we decided to get out of the city for a bit. We took a drive down to the Valley, to check out the fall colours, visit the farm stands, and enjoy the beautiful sunny day.
We ended up in Kentville, where the annual Harvest Festival is happening at the moment. All over the town, the "pumpkin people" were out in force. People had dressed up all kinds of straw figures, gave them pumpkin heads, and put them out on their lawns. Needless to say, the town was busy, with lots of visitors coming to have a look.
Pumpkin marching band:
Her Majesty's Canadian Pumpkin Forces, on parade:
The Pumpkin Blossom Queen and her Mountie escort:
Pumpkin kiddies around the maypole:
Errrr...not too sure what this fella is all about... ;-)
(Click on the pics to enlarge them.)
We've had a variety of foster animals from A.'s clinic staying at our place over the last 18 months or so. Some have been with us a couple of times. Last week, Gnasher the rabbit came back again, to be fostered by us for an indefinite period (she was with us in January and again in March).
As you may or may not recall, Gnasher has some pretty serious behavioural issues (i.e. she snorts/growls when approached, is aggressive, and bites with little provocation). Unfortunately, having been in the clinic for almost a year now, confined to a small animal carrier, she has only gotten worse. She's the only rabbit in the clinic at the moment, and since she's been there for ages - and we now have a large empty cage which used to house our guinea pig - A. thought we should foster her for a while. She'll have a better quality of life, with a larger cage and opportunities to exercise outside the cage every day (she's quite overweight at the moment, from being overfed by the girls who work at the clinic). And hopefully, with time and patience, we might be able to do something about her aggressive behaviour. As it stands, I can't imagine anyone wanting to adopt her - she's really quite vicious when approached, and has already taken a few chunks out of me. The only way I can pick her up is to throw a towel over her first. I need to get myself a pair of leather gauntlet gloves, in order to handle her!
How long she will stay with us really depends on whether, and how quickly, we can alter her behaviour. If she had a better temperament, A. could probably find a good home for her in fairly short order. But we'll see how it goes.
Whoo! News just in that the Nova Scotia Supreme Court has struck down the Sunday shopping ban here. The court issued a ruling today on the case taken by two major grocery chains against the provincial government, for introducing special regulations in June that specifically prevented them from opening on Sundays. Predictably, the court ruled that the government had overstepped the mark in issuing the regulations - much the same judgment that was made in 1999 when another, smaller grocery chain here took a similar case to court.
The premier has stated that the province won't be appealing the ruling, or seeking alternative ways to enforce the ban on Sunday shopping. This means that starting this weekend, all retail stores in NS can open on Sundays if they want - though I can't imagine that too many beyond the grocery stores will do so immediately, seeing as how it's a holiday long weekend coming up.
I suspect that this outcome has been planned for some time. Now, when rural Nova Scotians and religious types (who voted overwhelmingly for the Sunday shopping ban during the last provincial plebiscite on the issue, in 2004) start yelling and complaining about the ruling, the government can throw up its hands and say, "Oh well, we tried." I'm quite sure the government knew it was only a matter of time before the courts struck down the ban as arbitrary and unfair to the business community. The Sunday shopping issue has been a political hot potato in NS for years, and I'm sure that many in government will be quite relieved to leave it behind.
I'm delighted by the ruling, myself. Having lived many years in other countries where Sunday shopping is permitted, NS seemed puritanical and backward in comparison (and is apparently the last jurisdiction in North America to keep such a ban in place). Not to mention the fact that Sunday is the only day of the week that A. and I both have off from work. Spending our Saturday nights doing grocery store runs was a drag, to say the least.
Not too much going on this past month, so I've posted just a few pics here.
We put a new roof on our house this past week. The job has been in the cards since we moved in, but we decided we'd just get it done this year. The roof was pretty worn in many places, and we had a problem with a leak around one of the bedroom windows upstairs, which caused a little damage to the plaster on our living room ceiling. Hopefully that's been sorted out now.
The new roof doesn't really look very different to me, but I know next to nothing about these things. A. seems pleased with the job the roofers did, though. We wanted to keep the same colour of shingles - red - but the replacements are a little browner than what we had originally. Still looks OK, though.
The roofers we employed are an interesting bunch. They are actually Mennonites, and live in a religious community just north of the city. They do all kinds of work - roofs, siding, windows, as well as furniture-making and cabinetry - but only take on work that's been referred to them by a previous client (we had to be 'introduced' to them by A.'s friend C., who's employed them to do a lot of work on his own house). And once the job is complete, you don't actually pay them directly for their work - you make a donation to the community. It's an unusual business model, to say the least.
Another year, another low-key Halloween. However, tonight we had our first-ever trick-or-treaters - very exciting. Our neighbour D. brought his two little girls over, dressed as a clown and a vampire, respectively. Needless to say, they garnered themselves quite a large scoff of treats, as A. had laid in ample supplies of choccies "just in case" an army of kids materialised at our door. Heh.
